The story

The pilgrimage that brings more than 2 million Muslims to Mecca every year tends to make them more religiously observant and also more tolerant, a huge study of Pakistani pilgrims suggests.

Muslims who undertake the hajj "return with more positive views towards people from other countries," are more likely to say "that people of different religions are equal," and are twice as likely as other religious Muslims to condemn Osama bin Laden, the study found.

"People become more orthodox yet more tolerant," one of the study's authors, Asim Ijaz Khwaja of Harvard University, said of hajjis -- those who make the pilgrimage. Read full article »